Dammit Jim!

We thought it would be nice to have an easy simple wedding. Luckily we’re in Pennsylvania where, thanks to an historical abundance of Quakers, they have self-uniting weddings. Unlike normal wedding which require a priest or official, self-uniting weddings only need two witnesses. It sounded kind of cool to do our own wedding, so we gave it a shot.

So we went to the local Orphan’s Court (a nice pleasant sounding name) office to get our license. Things were going smoothly but once we asked for a self-uniting license, the clerk immediately asked us if we were Quakers and, when we said we were not, refused to let us register. Now I’m no legal scholar but when a government official asks your religion and then denies you service based on your answer, it sure sounds like somebody is mixing their church with their state. This was especially annoying because I had already read up on things and knew that the ACLU and a couple who wanted a self-uniting marriage had already brought the case to court and won. But I’m no lawyer and Philadelphia’s (more sensible) court house is just as close so we just went there the next day. The downtown Philadelphia clerks didn’t hassle us (although they are strangely very strict about having some piece of paper with your social security number on it) and we paid the extra $10 for a self-uniting license and got our license a few days later.

So, if you’re getting married in Pennsylvania and want to do your own ceremony, a self-uniting license might be slightly more hassle but should be pretty easy to get either by calling the ACLU or going to a non-backwater clerk (e.g. not Delaware County). A self-uniting marriage might also be a good option for people who want a friend or relative to marry them since Pennsylvania is currently invalidating marriages by ministers it doesn’t like (again I’m no lawyer but how does that sound at all constitutional?).

I just had a nice simple wedding a couple weeks ago (that and the new job is keeping posts even more sparse than usual). We weren’t doing anything big but I thought it’d be cool to dress up, especially since Xiaofen already picked up a wedding dress in China. So I started looking around for tux rentals. Surprisingly (to my uncultured self at least), tuxedos cost $150 to rent and you need to give them several weeks notice. This seemed a bit high so I went home and looked around the internet for typical prices. It turns out tuxedos really do tend to cost $150 to rent. But while googling, I noticed that at least one online store sells complete tuxedo packages for around $300.

Now I don’t mind spending money when I have to but when somebody wants to charge me 50% of the purchase price to borrow something for the day I’m going to draw the line. And get a bit annoyed. So I thought I might as well write it up here and maybe help someone else avoid getting screwed by tuxedo rentals.

I was a little worried there would be some sort of trick to a tuxedo that (relatively) cheap but the tuxedo arrived two days after I ordered it (I’m having amazing luck with shipping recently) and the package really seems to cover everything you need (except shoes and socks); jacket, pants, shirt, vest, bow tie, handkerchief (apparently called a pocket square) and simple cuff and button links. I did need to get the pants hemmed but I guess that’s normal and it was only $8 at a local dry cleaner. I’m no tuxedo expert but it seems to look pretty sharp and feels nice and comfortable.

So if you need a tux, buy4lesstuxedo worked well for me.

Details only interesting to people looking for tuxes: I thought the Geoffrey Beene tuxes looked the best out of all of them (although I wonder how much of that is due to the photography and model choice). I wanted a shawl or peaked collar (I never would have predicted I’d be writing about tuxedo collars on here) but they had a pretty low selection of both in my size. So I ended up getting the 2 button notch collar by Geoffrey Beene.

I couldn’t find any non advertisement pictures on Google so if here is a picture of a Geoffrey Beene 2 button notch tuxedo (and a beautiful bride) for any tuxedo shoppers.